East Tennessee Interfaith Statement of Support for Same-Sex MarriageJune 2013

As an interfaith coalition of congregations, clergy and laypeople in East Tennessee, we uphold the worth and dignity of all persons, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. We come from a variety of religious traditions, all of whom see our congregations as extended families bound by a commitment to care for each other, to grow together in understanding, and to serve the communities in which we live. We support the legal recognition of same-sex marriages based on our understanding and practice of faith as personal, communal, and justice-seeking. We celebrate the richness and challenge of diversity for congregational life and we welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning individuals and families into full participation in that diversity. We acknowledge the particular wounds which our society regularly inflicts on LGBTQ people and families through unfair policies, violence, harassment, and silence. Historically, religious institutions have played a primary role in this enterprise of fear. We assert that the enterprise of equality for same-sex couples is a holy one. The damage healed by blessing the courage of LGBTQ lives and families serves as witness to this fact. The health of our traditions and of our congregations is founded on shared commitment to our principles and beliefs, not on a model of heterosexual nuclear family. We are called to become a greater kind of family, with liberty and justice for all, an ideal on which the United States was built. We speak as one family of LGBTQ people and allies and look forward to the day when couples across the entire country are no longer denied the same legal access to basic protections on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.